Getting down to the point, can you imagine the political fallout from crushing the value of a gas car? It's a truck sized political landmine, and no party is willing to touch that thing with a hundred foot stick.
Gas still has significant advantages that electric has yet to match. Worst gas has 53x the specific energy of the best Li-ion, and even with a hundred % efficient induction motor and a 10% efficient motor (try closer to 30% realistically), gas is still a much more energy dense fuel.
Still, gas has a ton going for it. It's quicker to "charge" by an order of magnitude; it's easy to carry an auxiliary supply to double or triple range. Cold weather and reliability are excellent (hundreds of thousands of miles with a minimum of maintenance). There are no concerns about cell wearout (batteries will last for 5 years, maybe). Virtually everywhere on the planet, there's someone in any population center who knows how to work with gas cars.
The network for gas is highly developed and highly entrenched. No one is giving up trillions in value without a fight. In all honesty, I expect to see gasoline powered vehicles on the road for the next 100 years, barring an unprecedented revolution.
Mostly you are right, but not entirely. Many of your concerns about electric cars are growing pains which means they need to be separated.
Cold weather reliability for electric cars will get better.
Battery wear out will be a problem we learn to solve - replacement batteries already exist, they just need to be factored into the cost of the car.
Most of the things you need to work on for electric cars are exactly the same as gas. You still have brakes, tires, a suspension system. The rest are things that those mechanics will learn, just as their learned to work on gas engines.
When there are enough electric cars on the road the network will follow.
You are correct that in 8 years the gas/diesel car will still dominate. It isn't clear if buyers will switch to electric cars by enough that all new cars are electric in 8 years (if the buyers don't switch the politicians will blink and repeal the 8 year law). However as buyers switch to electric cars the infrastructure will follow.
The real question is will non-cars switch to electric. The fuel density difference is just a minor annoyance for cars. For truck, trains, tractors, and other heavy duty operations the energy density is much more important.
I think you might be a bit off here on the extent to which the average driver will be needing gasoline.
Tesla's have less than 10% battery degradation after 8 years so far.
What will happen is people will buy an electric car as a second car. They'll get comfortable charging every night and then buy a Chevy volt like car that usually won't need gas but can range extender as needed. A large portion of those users will realize you don't even need the range extender most of the time.
Precisely! If you need an exemplar, just look at lead... an element that was known for centuries to make people crazy, which was formerly a gasoline additive. And what about all those other additives and emissions? Then you start looking at bunker fuel. This stuff ain't good for you by any stretch.
Getting down to the point, can you imagine the political fallout from crushing the value of a gas car? It's a truck sized political landmine, and no party is willing to touch that thing with a hundred foot stick.
Gas still has significant advantages that electric has yet to match. Worst gas has 53x the specific energy of the best Li-ion, and even with a hundred % efficient induction motor and a 10% efficient motor (try closer to 30% realistically), gas is still a much more energy dense fuel.
Still, gas has a ton going for it. It's quicker to "charge" by an order of magnitude; it's easy to carry an auxiliary supply to double or triple range. Cold weather and reliability are excellent (hundreds of thousands of miles with a minimum of maintenance). There are no concerns about cell wearout (batteries will last for 5 years, maybe). Virtually everywhere on the planet, there's someone in any population center who knows how to work with gas cars.
The network for gas is highly developed and highly entrenched. No one is giving up trillions in value without a fight. In all honesty, I expect to see gasoline powered vehicles on the road for the next 100 years, barring an unprecedented revolution.